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Your Source For The Best In BasketballSat, 10 Dec 2016 02:45:34 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1Y’all Must Have Forgothttp://www.slamonline.com/nba/shareef-abdur-rahim-interview-grizzlies-hawks/
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Former All-Star Shareef Abdur-Rahim always preferred to let his game do the talking.

But for all the 18 and 8 nights he has, Millsap just isn’t that sexy to mainstream fans. He’s never had crazy outbursts on IG. He doesn’t have wacky on-court mannerisms. He rocks the calmest goatee in the game.

In 20 years, when your kids are talking about the NBA’s best players of the past few decades, Millsap’s name may not come up. It won’t be his fault, of course; it’ll be a flawed system’s. The flashy guys get the glory.

But players as gifted as Paul Millsap should not suffer the same fate as Netflix passwords and old girlfriends’ phone numbers.

The same goes for another forward, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, who quietly displayed an incredibly underrated (but unbelievably steady) game in the early ’00s for those same Hawks, and three other teams.

A high school phenom back at Atlanta-area Wheeler HS, Shareef was named Georgia’s Mr. Basketball in ’94 and ’95. The do-everything Abdur-Rahim went on to the University of California and didn’t miss a beat. The first freshman to ever be named Pac-10 Player of the Year, Shareef averaged over 21 points and 8 rebounds a game.

Though Abdur-Rahim’s lone collegiate season ended with a disappointing first-round loss in the NCAA Tourney, he went on to have a stellar NBA career that spanned 13 years, leaving a permanent mark on those closest to him.

Like Todd Bozeman. How could he forget Reef? The two are intertwined in Cal basketball lore. The star on Coach Bozeman’s last Golden Bears squad in ’96, Abdur-Rahim doesn’t hesitate to admit Bozeman was the main reason he chose to attend Cal over legendary ACC hoops institutions like Georgia Tech and North Carolina.

Bozeman reciprocates the praise. “The presence that he had on the court and the focus stood out to me,” says Bozeman, who was an assistant at Cal from 1990-92 before becoming the head coach in ’93. “It was almost like he was the only kid out there.”

Twenty-plus years later, their relationship is still solid. Coach recalled a moment not too long ago when Benji, a 30 for 30 special on Ben Wilson, the Chicago hoops icon who was tragically murdered in 1984, aired on ESPN. “I texted Reef,” he remembers. “I was sitting there watching—I had never seen [Wilson] play. I said, ‘Man, he looks like you, Reef!’ He said, ‘Coach, I’m sitting here with my son watching this right now.’ When you watch that thing, that’s Reef! I’m telling you. That’s what he looked like. The straight-up running, graceful and could really score.”

Reef, a devout Muslim, was always focused. Instead of getting sidetracked with things off the court, he kept his head down and his field-goal percentage up (a Pac-10 fifth-best 51.8 percent).

“Reef would work and work and work,” says Bozeman. “He would just put that time in. One of the stories that epitomizes that work—it probably has something to do with his religion, too—was when we were playing a game against USC or Washington. It was in the middle of Ramadan. He wouldn’t drink water. He wouldn’t do nothin’. Every timeout, I’d go, ‘Reef, you good?’ He’d say, ‘I’m good, Boze, I’m good.’ His mom was sitting behind the bench and she kept saying, ‘Tell Reef it’s OK if he drinks water.’ I said, ‘Reef, your mom said you could drink water.’ He said, ‘I’m good, Boze, I’m good.’ He must have had 30 and 15 [that game]. It was inspirational.”

A smooth, hard-working forward for the Grizzlies, Hawks, Blazers and Kings, the 6-9, 225-pound Abdur-Rahim made the All-Rookie Team in ’97 and made his lone All-Star appearance in ’02. You know how Draymond Green goes 100 percent every night in the paint, the perimeter and at all points in between? That was Shareef way before Dray was out of diapers.

“I definitely don’t think he gets the recognition he deserves,” admits Bozeman, head coach at Morgan State University since 2006. “He had serious numbers. You can compare his numbers to a lot of people and theirs don’t stack up.”

We can’t say unequivocally what the reason is that more people don’t know about Abdur-Rahim’s 50-point game in ’01, or that his 15,028 career points are more than Alonzo Mourning’s and Kevin Johnson’s. But it likely has something to do with the fact he was drafted alongside Class of ’96 studs like Allen Iverson, Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant. Abdur-Rahim, Antoine Walker and Jermaine O’Neal were certified talents, no doubt, but for myriad reasons, they remain largely in the shadows to this day, at least compared to their cohorts.

“In some ways,” Shareef says now, “you try to keep up with those guys and the success that those guys had. I’ve always believed that really good players are either competing against themselves, pushing themselves to different limits, or they’re competing against really good players. That collection of guys is who I battled. I wanted to keep up with them or surpass them.”

Unfortunately for Abdur-Rahim, he only tasted the Playoffs twice, both toward the end of his career when he played with Sacramento.

“I’m at peace with my career, the time I had playing basketball,” says Shareef, who for the first seven seasons of his career averaged a Millsap-esque 20, 8 and 3. “If anything, I would have liked to have played on some better teams, teams that were further along. Had that happened, then maybe that wouldn’t be the sentiment.”

But just when you think the level-headed Abdur-Rahim will finally let off some steam, he adds, “but I’m thankful for the opportunity I had to play at the level I did. I was an All-Star. I played with some really good people. I played with some really good coaches. I cherish all of that.”

Damn, almost forgot who we were talking to for a second.

“I don’t know if young people understand the hard work and the focus and the determination [it takes to succeed],” Bozeman says. “KG has it. Shareef didn’t have the outward demonstration [of Kevin Garnett], but he was just like that.”

Abdur-Rahim, a father of two, has been so busy post-retirement that he simply hasn’t had the time to worry much about legacies. After hanging it up in ’08 with Sacramento, Shareef almost immediately stepped into the role of Kings assistant coach. A shock to no one, the heady Reef (“education is a priority to me,” he says) shot up the Kings’ hierarchy, becoming the assistant general manager and then the director of player personnel.

“It kind of just happened,” Reef says. “The people that were running the Kings when I retired, they asked me to stay on to coach some younger players. I did that for a while and that kind of evolved into me joining the front office. It was all a good experience. I was around some good people—[GM] Geoff Petrie, [vice president] Wayne Cooper, [assistant coach] Pete Carril. I was around a lot of smart basketball people.”

After some personnel changes and conflicting views on the direction of the team, Abdur-Rahim parted ways from the organization two years ago. “There are a lot of new people there with the ownership and management,” Abdur-Rahim says of the current state of the franchise. “A lot of time when that happens, you don’t have the same connections. But I pull for them and I want the Kings to do well.”

Again, no time to harp on the negative—Reef was recently named the NBA’s Associate VP of Basketball Operations. “One thing about sports is that it gives you an appetite for achievement,” he says. “It allows me to still have goals, still learn and still achieve.”

Folks in Atlanta, where Abdur-Rahim played for three seasons, have known about the man’s business acumen for some time now. For years, locals passed a building in East Point with the name “Reef House” out front. With little fanfare, the organization quietly helped at-risk teenagers with their homework and life-building skills. Abdur-Rahim and his team’s mission remains set on bettering the prospects for Atlanta’s youth, only now it’s evolved into an overall enrichment program called Future Foundation.

“I’m a product of people spending time with me,” Reef says. “It just makes sense to do the same. I feel very fortunate to have achieved the things that I have achieved. I had a platform to be able to [return the favor]. I’m thankful—in my neighborhood we’ve been able to establish the Future Foundation and different programs to try to help young people and be a resource for them to reach their goals.”

Adds Bozeman, “None of this surprises me. He’s always had that focus.”

By the time Coach hangs up the phone, he’s exhausted every glowing word in the English language to describe Shareef. But we totally get it—Bozeman wants to remind the world that Shareef Abdur-Rahim was one helluva basketball player.

Three minutes after the call, though, Bozeman is calling back. As fate would have it, in all the discussion about a player the basketball world has seemingly pushed to the back of its memory, Coach himself forgets something. “I just want to say that he was the consummate student-athlete and pro,” he adds.

Honestly, the second call was so quick that we didn’t even bother putting on the recorder. Didn’t need to. We wouldn’t dare forget.

The question was always the same. Every time Willie Watkins saw you, he wanted to know how you were doing. Of course, he cared about everybody’s health and well being. But since Watkins ran one of the most successful funeral homes in Atlanta, he had another, ahem, more professional reason for his concern.

On November 1, 2013, Walt Bellamy joined Jim Washington and Dewey McClain for the Atlanta Hawks game against Toronto at Philips Arena. The three men often gathered to watch the team, which made sense, since Bellamy played for Atlanta from 1970-74, and Washington was on the team from ’71-74. McClain was a former linebacker for the Falcons and just four days away from winning a special election to the Georgia House of Representatives. As the Hawks went about the business of bumping off the Raptors, 102-95, Watkins—a season ticket holder—approached the three men with a smile and asked about them.

“We’re good, Willie,” Washington said. “We’re not ready for you yet.”

Everybody laughed, as usual, and the game went on. Nobody could have known that Washington had been wrong. The next day, they would indeed need Watkins. Well, at least Bellamy would. While working out in a gym at a hotel near his house, Bellamy died at the age of 74. His wife of 53 years, Helen, called Washington at about 11 a.m. to deliver the news.

“It was a shock,” Washington says. “I was sitting there watching the game with him, and the next day, [Helen] called and said he had passed.

“Wow.”

It’s likely Bellamy’s heart gave out, even though he had seemed to Washington as if everything was going well for him. “I found out later that he had a pacemaker,” Washington says. “I didn’t know that.” It can’t be blamed for retiring from the job. During his life, Bellamy had played 13 seasons (and one game of a 14th) with five different franchises during a Hall of Fame career that produced more than 20,000 points and 14,000 rebounds. From the moment he rampaged into the League as a rookie with the dreadful Chicago Packers—who later became the Baltimore Bullets and eventually today’s Washington Wizards—and fashioned a Rookie of the Year performance that included 31.6 ppg and 19.0 rpg, Bellamy was one of the most talented big men in the NBA. A 6-11 specimen who could run with guards and still play inside well enough to make Bill Russell take notice, Bellamy was an enigmatic talent who could dazzle one night and infuriate the next.

“If he had [Hall of Fame center] Willis Reed’s tenacity, he would have been the greatest player ever,” legendary Knicks guard Walt Frazier says.

Motivation was indeed somewhat elusive for Bellamy, whose personality quirks included speaking of himself in the third person—“Walt Bellamy is open under the basket,” he would announce in the huddle during timeouts—sending back just about every meal he ordered in restaurants and heading for the phone booth to make calls as soon as his team hit a new city.

“We called him the ‘Phone Ranger,’” Frazier says, laughing. But Bellamy was more than just a puzzle. His post-basketball life included work with the NAACP, the Urban League and the Atlanta YMCA. Bellamy was also the Keeper of the Door for the Georgia State Senate, an appointed position. He was a good friend and a fun companion who enjoyed making others think he was mad at them.

“I told people that Walt was the biggest put-on artist I knew,” Washington says. “If you didn’t know him, you would think he was upset at you. I would tell people, ‘He putting you on.’ He was a very interesting character. He never ceased to amaze me.”

The 1961-62 Chicago Packers were not the worst basketball team in NBA history. With 18 wins—double the all-time League low—they don’t even enter the discussion, particularly with what the Sixers have been doing the past several years. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t terrible.

Mostly terrible.

Bellamy was certainly the exception. The rookie from Indiana averaged the aforementioned 31.6 ppg and 19.0 rpg with the Packers, a remarkable season for anyone, especially a first-year player. In many years, Bellamy’s scoring average might have led the League, but in ’61-62, a guy named Wilt happened to do the unthinkable and average 50.4 ppg for the whole damn season. Sure, he scored 100 against the poor Knicks, but he also hit for 60 or more on 14 other occasions. Sorry, Bells.

There’s a popular story concerning Bellamy’s first meeting with Chamberlain. The rook extended his hand before the opening tip and said, “H’lo, Mister Chamberlain. I’m Walter Bellamy.” Unimpressed, Wilt replied, “Hello, Walter. You won’t get a shot off in the first half.” Chamberlain proceeded to block the first 9 shots Bellamy took in the lane. Before the second half began, Chamberlain backed down. “OK, Walter, now you can play.” Bellamy finished with 14 points. Wilt had 51 in a 122-114 Philadelphia win.

Bellamy played in four straight All-Star Games at the beginning of his career, during which time he played for three iterations of the same franchise: the Packers, the Chicago Zephyrs and the Baltimore Bullets. Slick Leonard, who gained renown for coaching the Pacers in both the ABA and NBA, played with and coached Bellamy during the big man’s first four seasons. He remembers one particular game during the ’63-64 campaign when Bellamy put up 45 against the Celtics and Bill Russell, who often said Bellamy was one of his toughest opponents.

“Walt could score,” Leonard says. “He could run the floor and was fast. He could shoot and had a post game. He was able to put the ball on the floor, too.”

Bellamy was the modern power forward three decades before the species debuted in the NBA. There really wasn’t anything he couldn’t do on the floor. Frazier says Bellamy was “the fastest guy” on the Knicks. But there was that nagging sense that Bellamy could have always been a little more. Leonard remembers one time in St. Louis when he exploded at Bellamy because of his lack of effort.

“We really went at it,” Leonard says. “He felt like he could get away with playing when he felt like it. When he wanted to, he could go with the best of them.”

Eight games into Bellamy’s fifth year with what would become the Baltimore franchise, he was shipped to the Knicks for Jim Barnes, Johnny Green and Johnny Egan—none of whom had Bellamy’s talent. Bellamy arrived in New York in late 1965, a little over a year after the Knicks had drafted Willis Reed. He was his usual productive self in his first season (actually, 72 games) with New York, averaging 23.2 ppg and 16.0 rpg. He continued to produce over the next two-and-a-half seasons in Gotham, but he and Reed were a toxic blend. They competed against the opposition but were also personal rivals. Reed’s dogged approach to the game didn’t blend with Bellamy’s casual style, and Bellamy’s status as the team’s starting pivot angered Reed, who disliked playing the power forward spot.

“Willis and Bells hated each other,” Frazier says. “Willis wanted to play center, and Bells would fight him for rebounds. It was terrible.”

Frazier marvels at Bellamy’s talent, praising his shooting ability, his great screens and his quickness. He says the best NBA big men had trouble guarding Bellamy when he would drive to the hoop. But a cavalier work ethic prevented him from becoming one of the League’s elite players. You want to talk pure talent? Bellamy was in the discussion for the NBA’s best. But putting it into practice was a different story.

“He used to kill Chamberlain and Russell, and then [lumbering big man Tom] Boerwinkle would get 30 on him,” Frazier says.

The stylish Clyde appreciated Bellamy’s “exquisite tastes” and said that going out with him was always fun, but as the Knicks began to rise in the Eastern Conference in the late 1960s, the franchise had to make a decision. New York management knew Bellamy and Reed couldn’t coexist, at least not in a winning fashion. So the team dished Bellamy and Howard Komives to Detroit for forward Dave DeBusschere, a move that allowed Reed to move into the middle and solidified the team’s starting lineup—guards Frazier and Dick Barnett, forwards DeBusschere and Bill Bradley and Reed in the middle. The next season, New York won the world title.

“Willis was a tremendous leader,” Frazier says. “He worked hard in practice and was the antithesis of Bells in terms of galvanizing the team. DeBusschere was the final piece of the puzzle and made us a Championship team.”

Bellamy spent parts of two seasons in Detroit before the Pistons dealt him to Atlanta on February 1, 1970, a move that began the final chapter in Bellamy’s career. Those were interesting times for the Hawks, who drafted legendary gunner Pete Maravich that spring, adding him to a power-packed offense that included Bellamy, “Sweet” Lou Hudson and Walt Hazzard. The ’70-71 Hawks averaged 114.0 ppg but gave up 115.8, fourth-worst in the League. Bellamy could still pull down the rebounds (12.8 rpg) but was no longer a huge point producer (14.9 ppg).

“We had a backcourt of Lou Hudson and Pete Maravich, each of whom was going to put up 20 shots,” says Washington, who joined the Hawks early in the ’71-72 season. “There weren’t a lot of shots for other people.”

Bellamy spent four-plus seasons with Atlanta, his longest tenure with any one franchise. He could still score from all over the court, and he was perhaps the most mobile big man in the NBA. But he developed some intangibles that made him even more valuable. For instance, he could really set a screen. “He would open some holes for you when he set a pick,” says Joe Caldwell, a guard on the ’69-70 team. “He would stand still and take you out.”

As always, a strong dose of Bellamy charm came with the high-level basketball. Washington recalls the 6-11 center’s refusing to get on airplanes with the rest of the team, because “he didn’t want people to think he was a basketball player.” Well, no one was going to mistake him for a jockey, that’s for sure. Bellamy had odd habits when he went out to eat, too. Once, Washington and Maravich were sitting in a restaurant when Bellamy came in and sat down—at another table. “Pete said, ‘Watch. No matter what he orders, he’ll send it back,’” Washington says. “Sure enough, he did.”

But nothing Bellamy did was malicious or harmful. Sure, he could have played harder, but he was not wired that way. He played the game he loved the way he wanted to play it. And he was a true original—and one of the first athletes to speak about himself in the third person.

Once, Bellamy was upset that the referees weren’t calling fouls against the players who were guarding him. As he ran down the court, he said, loud enough for a ref to hear, “Walt Bellamy never gets calls.” According to Washington, the official responded in classic fashion: “The next time you talk to Walt Bellamy, tell him he’s going to get a technical foul if he doesn’t keep quiet.”

Bellamy probably didn’t relent. But he didn’t get the T, either. He just kept on playing, the way he wanted to, when he wanted to.

It was good enough for him, even if the rest of us might have wanted more.

An intense competitor whose non-stop hustle belied his lack of size, Cliff Hagan is the sort of Hall of Famer you probably you don’t know much about. Or didn’t, until now. In this Old School feature from SLAM 102 (November ’06), Alan Paul catches up with the hoop legend. —Ed.

by Alan Paul

Contemporary Kentuckians could be forgiven for thinking Cliff Hagan is as much of an historical relic as his old coach Adolph Rupp. After all, like Rupp, Hagan has an arena named after him (University of Kentucky’s baseball stadium) as well as a large Boys & Girls Club (in his hometown of Owensboro). His legacy is secure, but the 74-year-old Hagan is very much alive and well, and more than happy to discuss his own stellar basketball career, which saw him win titles in high school, college and the NBA.

Hagan arrived at UK in 1950 and teamed with fellow Hall of Famer Frank Ramsey to lead the team to a three-year record of 86-5 and the ’51 NCAA title. They went 25-0 his senior year, as the 6-4 forward averaged 24 ppg and 14 rpg. The Celtics drafted the two-time All-American in ’53, but Hagan never played for Boston; he entered the Air Force for two years and was then traded, along with Ed Macauley, to the St. Louis Hawks for the Draft rights to Bill Russell. A five-time NBA All-Star, he played with the Hawks for 10 years, averaging 18 ppg and helping the team win the ’58 title.

Hagan retired in ’66, then returned a year later as player-coach of the ABA’s Dallas Chaparrals and became the first player to play in both the ABA and NBA All-Star games. Hagan, who served as UK’s director of athletics from ’75-88, was elected to the Hall of Fame in ’78. He lives in Lexington and Florida.

SLAM: Your Kentucky team won the ’51 national championship; a year later the team’s season was cancelled by the NCAA. You all returned in ’53-54 to go 25-0, only to be barred from the Tournament. How did that all come about?

CH: It was reported that some of our players from the back-to-back championship teams [’48 and ’49] were involved in the point shaving scandals that hit Long Island University, Bradley and other places. They didn’t lose any games, but apparently some guys had accepted money though they insisted they didn’t do anything to alter a game. The year we were banned, we still practiced together, playing four intra-squad games that sold out Memorial Coliseum. We came back the next season really ready to go and feeling like we had something to prove. We opened with Temple; I got 51 and we never looked back. We went 25-0, then were told we couldn’t go to the Tournament because three of us had entered graduate school. It was disappointing. LaSalle won the Tournament, and we had beaten them.

SLAM: What made Adolph Rupp a great coach?

CH: I think he was brilliant. He was a tremendous motivator and speaker, someone you had to pay court to. He was commanding and no one questioned him. He was a good game coach, but it wasn’t that complicated. He devised an offense and you had to fit in. Also, he didn’t have any other duties or jobs, unlike most other coaches at the time. He was full time on basketball.

SLAM: You were drafted by the Celtics but never played for them. How did that go down?

CH: I knew Red Auerbach from my freshman year in college from playing at Kutshers Country Club in New York in the summer, and I was excited to go to the Celtics. Then I got a call from Red Holzman, whom I had never heard of. He was the coach of the Hawks and he said I was coming there. I was disappointed. Then I got to training camp and he told me that due to the depth in the frontcourt and my size, I was a guard, which I had never played before. I barely played the first half of my rookie year and may have never had a career if there hadn’t been a coaching change. Alex Hannum came in as player-coach, Bob Pettit broke his wrist and I got a chance to play. I had some success and stayed in the lineup when he returned.

SLAM: That season, ’57, the Hawks played the Celtics for the title, a series many consider the best Finals ever. It began and ended with double-OT 125-123 games.

CH: For Game 1, there were about 5,000 people in Boston Garden and we beat them. They had five or six Hall of Famers—Russell, Cousy, Tommy Heinsohn, Bill Sharman, Frank Ramsey—and they were about to go on that incredible roll [11 titles in 13 years] but they hadn’t won anything yet. We were not intimidated. We had to go back there for Game 7, and it was an incredible, up-and-down game. At the end of the second overtime, we’re down two and have the ball with less than two seconds left. We call a timeout and Hannum puts himself in the game and says the play is for him to inbound the ball, throw it fullcourt off the backboard—there was no advancing it to midcourt—where Pettit would get the rebound and put it in. Everyone thought he was nuts, but lo and behold, he puts the ball off the board, Pettit gets the rebound…and the ball rolls off. They won their first championship and we were dejected. I had a real good playoff run and came back the next season really ready.

SLAM: And the next year, you beat the Celtics to win the title. Did you realize how special it was?

CH: No. I really didn’t. And until someone recently wrote a book about the Hawks [Greg Marecek’s Full Court: The Untold Stories of the St. Louis Hawks] I didn’t realize that I led the team in scoring for the playoffs. I scored 30 points per game in the first round, and 27.7 in the second. All you ever hear about is Pettit’s 50 points in the deciding game, but I actually led the team in the entire playoffs.

SLAM: You were a 6-4 forward. What was the key to your success?

CH: I could run, jump and hustle. I got out on the break, filled the lanes and rebounded well. I could put the ball on the floor, go either way and hit a jumper or a hook. I once took Russell in the pivot and got 39, because while he was very effective helping others, one on one he would back off and I could go across the lane with either hand and take him under the basket. But generally I scored by moving. The secret in basketball is the ability to get off a shot in traffic. If people have to set screens for you and all that stuff, you are limited.

SLAM: In your third year, Clyde Lovellette arrived and you guys were considered one of the best frontlines in the history of the game—three Hall of Famers. What was each of your roles?

CH: Pettit played inside, Clyde could shoot from outside and I would get my points off offensive rebounds and fast breaks. But we all played together as a team, and I don’t think we looked at it like that. We were always looking to fast break, and you just hustled your ass off. You came to play every night and rested when you weren’t playing. There were just eight teams with 10 players, so only 80 players were in the NBA, and there were no guaranteed contracts. It was extremely competitive because we all had a mindset that you were playing for next year’s contract every game. It was always insecure. They were always drafting a big forward or two to take my spot for less money, so I had to earn my position each year, whether I was an All-Star or not.

SLAM: After briefly retiring from the NBA in ’66, you returned as the player-coach of the ABA’s Dallas Chaparrals a year later. How did that come about?

CH: The Chaparrals were the last ABA team formed, and I was excited for the challenge of coaching in a new league. I had no intention of playing, though the owners wanted me to. I ran in scrimmages to stay in shape and saw that I could still run and jump and make a contribution. I scored 40 in the first game and played in the first ABA All-Star game. Midway through the next season, I decided not to play any more after a knee injury. The only way I could control myself was to not put my uniform on under my warm-up. Otherwise, I knew my competitiveness would get the best of me and I would put myself into a tight game.

SLAM: You were successful as a coach. Why not pursue it further?

CH: I decided I was from the old school and was too demanding to succeed. For instance, I had a player eating popcorn in the dressing room, and I came from the school where you ate a meal at 4 and then rested for the game. And I had no problem coming off the bench, because I could contribute right away, having been sitting there mentally involved in every play. I just couldn’t understand someone lounging on the bench, unprepared to enter when called upon.

SLAM: You were reputed to have had quite a temper and to have gotten in a lot of scuffles while in the ABA. In the book Loose Balls, you’re actually described as having a split personality—nice Christian family man off the court and a wild brawler on it.

CH: That’s greatly exaggerated. I’m a pussycat. Sure, I got into a couple of scuffles, but no more than other people. Now, I do think it’s true that I had a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde thing. When I got on the court, the adrenaline gets going and I was all business. I think you’ve got to have that. You’ve got to come ready to play every night and have some personal pride in everything you do, from the team’s performance to your stats to your free throws.